Agent-based assessment framework for behavior-changing feedback devices: Spreading of devices and heating behavior
Authored by Emile J L Chappin, Georg Holtz, Thorben Jensen
Date Published: 2015
DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2015.06.006
Sponsors:
German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)
Platforms:
NetLogo
Model Documentation:
ODD
Mathematical description
Model Code URLs:
Model code not found
Abstract
Heating behavior of households is key for reducing domestic energy
demand and mitigating climate change. Recently, various technical
devices have been developed, providing households with feedback on their
heating behavior and supporting energy conservation behavior. The impact
of such devices on overall energy consumption depends on (1) the impact
of a device within a household, (2) the diffusion of devices to other
households and the number of adopters, and (3) the diffusion of the
induced behavioral change beyond these households. While the first two
processes are currently established in assessments of sustainable
household devices, we suggest that adding behavior diffusion is
essential when assessing devices that explicitly target behavioral
change. We therefore propose an assessment framework that includes all
three processes. We implement this framework in an agent-based model by
combining two existing simulation models to explore the effect of adding
behavior diffusion. In three simulation experiments, we identify two
mechanisms by which behavior diffusion (1) spreads the effect of such
devices from adopters to non-adopters and (2) increases the average
speed of behavioral change of households. From these results we conclude
that behavior diffusion should be included in assessments of
behavior-changing feedback devices. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by
Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Tags
Simulation
Buildings
diffusion
Conservation
Interventions
Electricity consumption
Social-influence
Energy use behavior
Planned behavior
Occupancy